The result is more power and more torque. The module works by altering the fuel injection duration at the main phase of injection, this leads to a prolonged combustion process and therefore more downward pressure on the piston. This means when you’re towing heavy or using big power, your engine is safe. Though it can, it doesn’t push the limits, and this, along with a safety cut back feature integrated in the programming to slowly decrease enhancement on sustained pulls, protects your engine against dangerously high combustion temperatures. “The Steinbauer module is widely known as the safest performance increase for diesel engines in the world. We can advise people if their vehicle is DIY or better left to a dealer to fit.” SAFE v RISKY DIESEL TUNING Installation can be very easy taking just a few minutes, or quite tedious, taking hours. Can the average handy 4WDer fit a module themselves? In most cases yes, but this depends on the vehicle. Custom tuning is possible to fine tune the module to accommodate other modifications such as exhaust or turbo upgrades. “They are programmed for the model engine they are being fitted to. “All Steinbauer modules are plug and play,” says Andrew. Some actually disable engine warning lights and go outside factory safety settings.” PLUG AND PLAY ABILITY
A flash tuner will go into your ECU with new programming that the original manufacturer spent millions on setting up and perfecting.
So while a flash tune will get you some power increases, beware the huge risks to your engine. “A lot of people who program flash tunes understand computers, but know nothing about your diesel engine. “Would you let a computer hacker play with your diesel engine?” asks Andrew Bourne from Diesel Care. Slave tuners purchase the tuning files from the master tuners, and simply use a laptop to connect to your computer and upload the new tune to the computer, potentially without any clue about what’s actually going on. That means considerable expense, something very few ECU tuners in Australia have the finances or technical know-how to pull off. Master tuners spend a lot of time refining their ECU tune with multiple dyno runs and tests and often for each individual customer’s vehicle. There’s a big difference between a ‘master’ tuner and a ‘slave’ tuner. Here’s the thing a lot of people don’t understand.
ECU ‘TUNERS’ – ARE YOU GETTING WHAT YOU’RE PAYING FOR? We all know the saying ‘if it seems too good to be true, then it usually is’, and while we’ve spoken before about ECU tuning of modern common-rail diesels, this time we’re opening up the floor to Diesel Care to discuss their side of the story, and why they’ve banked their business’reputation on the Steinbauer range of performance modules.
It seems that everywhere you look, there is another person offering to come to you, plug in a laptop and get seemingly magical power figures with little more than a software update. One of the newest modifications to hit the 4WD scene is diesel ECU tuning, also known as ‘flash’ tuning. Diesel Care weighs into the power modules v ECU tuning debate with their side of the diesel powerup story